Family
In the context of human society, a family (from Latin: familia) is a group of people related either by consanguinity (by recognized birth), affinity (by marriage or other relationship), or co-residence (as implied by the etymology of the English word "family" ... from Latin familia 'family servants, domestics collectively, the servants in a household,' thus also 'members of a household, the estate, property; the household, including relatives and servants,' abstract noun formed from famulus 'servant, slave ...) or some combination of these.[citation needed] Members of the immediate family may include spouses, parents, brothers, sisters, sons, and daughters[citation needed]. Members of the extended family may include grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, nephews, nieces, and siblings-in-law[citation needed]. Sometimes these are also considered members of the immediate family, depending on an individual's specific relationship with them[citation needed]. In most societies, the family is the principal institution for the socialization of children. As the basic unit for raising children, anthropologists generally classify most family organizations as matrifocal (a mother and her children); conjugal (a wife, her husband, and children, also called the nuclear family); avuncular (for example, a grandparent, a brother, his sister, and her children); or extended (parents and children co-reside with other members of one parent's family). Sexual relations among the members are regulated by rules concerning incest such as the incest taboo. The word "family" can be used metaphorically to create more inclusive categories such as community, nationhood, global village, and humanism. The field of genealogy aims to trace family lineages through history. The family is also an important economic unit studied in family economics. Social One of the primary functions of the family involves providing a framework for the production and reproduction of persons biologically and socially. This can occur through the sharing of material substances (such as food); the giving and receiving of care and nurture (nurture kinship); jural rights and obligations; and moral and sentimental ties.34 Thus, one's experience of one's family shifts over time. From the perspective of children, the family is a "family of orientation": the family serves to locate children socially and plays a major role in their enculturation and socialization.5 From the point of view of the parent(s), the family is a "family of procreation", the goal of which is to produce and enculturate and socialize children.67 However, producing children is not the only function of the family; in societies with a sexual division of labor, marriage, and the resulting relationship between two people, it is necessary for the formation of an economically productive household.8910 Christopher Harris notes that the western conception of family is ambiguous and confused with the household, as revealed in the different contexts in which the word is used.11 Olivia Harris states this confusion is not accidental, but indicative of the familial ideology of capitalist, western countries that pass social legislation that insists members of a nuclear family should live together, and that those not so related should not live together; despite the ideological and legal pressures, a large percentage of families do not conform to the ideal nuclear family type.12 Size Further information: Fertility factor (demography) Mennonite siblings, Montana 1937 The total fertility rate of women varies from country to country, from a high of 6.76 children born/woman in Niger to a low of 0.81 in Singapore (as of 2015).13 Fertility is low in most Eastern European and Southern Europeancountries; and high in most Sub-Saharan African countries.13 In some cultures, the mother's preference of family size influences that of the children through early adulthood.14 A parent's number of children strongly correlates with the number of children that they will eventually have.15 Terminologies Family tree showing the relationship of each person to the black person. Swedish family eating, 1902 Main article: Kinship terminology In his book Systems of Consanguinity and Affinity of the Human Family, anthropologist Lewis Henry Morgan (1818–1881) performed the first survey of kinship terminologies in use around the world. Although much of his work is now considered dated, he argued that kinship terminologies reflect different sets of distinctions. For example, most kinship terminologies distinguish between sexes (the difference between a brother and a sister) and between generations (the difference between a child and a parent). Moreover, he argued, kinship terminologies distinguish between relatives by blood and marriage (although recently some anthropologists have argued that many societies define kinship in terms other than "blood"). Morgan made a distinction between kinship systems that use classificatory terminology and those that use descriptive terminology. Classificatory systems are generally and erroneously understood to be those that "class together" with a single term relatives who actually do not have the same type of relationship to ego. (What defines "same type of relationship" under such definitions seems to be genealogical relationship. This is problematic given that any genealogical description, no matter how standardized, employs words originating in a folk understanding of kinship.) What Morgan's terminology actually differentiates are those (classificatory) kinship systems that do not distinguish lineal and collateral relationships and those (descriptive) kinship systems that do. Morgan, a lawyer, came to make this distinction in an effort to understand Seneca inheritance practices. A Seneca man's effects were inherited by his sisters' children rather than by his own children.41 Morgan identified six basic patterns of kinship terminologies: * Hawaiian: only distinguishes relatives based upon sex and generation. * Sudanese: no two relatives share the same term. * Eskimo: in addition to distinguishing relatives based upon sex and generation, also distinguishes between lineal relatives and collateral relatives. * Iroquois: in addition to sex and generation, also distinguishes between siblings of opposite sexes in the parental generation. * Crow: a matrilineal system with some features of an Iroquois system, but with a "skewing" feature in which generation is "frozen" for some relatives. * Omaha: like a Crow system but patrilineal. Roles Group photograph of a Norwegian family by Gustav Borgen ca. 1900: Father, mother, three sons and two daughters. Extended family with roots in Cape Town, Kimberley and Pretoria, South Africa Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson with grandchild, 1900 An infant, his mother, his maternal grandmother, and his great-grandmother Queen Victoria, with her eldest daughter Father and child, Dhaka, Bangladesh Most Western societies employ Eskimo kinship terminology.[citation needed] This kinship terminology commonly occurs in societies based on conjugal (or nuclear) families, where nuclear families have a degree of relative mobility. Members of the nuclear use descriptive kinship terms: * Father: a male parent * Mother: a female parent * Son: a male child of the parent(s) * Daughter: a female child of the parent(s) * Brother: a male sibling * Sister: a female sibling * Husband: a male spouse * Wife: a female spouse * Grandfather: the father of a parent * Grandmother: the mother of a parent * Great-Grandfather: the father of a grandparent * Great-Grandmother: the mother of a grandparent * Cousins: two people who share at least one grandparent in common, but none of the same parents. * (In some language there is a difference between a grandfather/grandmother from the father's side and one from the mother's side) Such systems generally assume that the mother's husband is also the biological father. In some families, a woman may have children with more than one man or a man may have children with more than one woman. The system refers to a child who shares only one parent with another child as a "half-brother" or "half-sister". For children who do not share biological or adoptive parents in common, English-speakers use the term "stepbrother" or "stepsister" to refer to their new relationship with each other when one of their biological parents marries one of the other child's biological parents. Any person (other than the biological parent of a child) who marries the parent of that child becomes the "stepparent" of the child, either the "stepmother" or "stepfather". The same terms generally apply to children adopted into a family as to children born into the family. In the United States, one in five mothers have children by different fathers; among mothers with two or more children the figure is higher, with 28% having children with at least two different men. Such families are more common among Blacks and Hispanics, and among the lower socioeconomic class.42 Typically, societies with conjugal families also favor neolocal residence; thus upon marriage, a person separates from the nuclear family of their childhood (family of orientation) and forms a new nuclear family (family of procreation). However, in western society, the single parent family has been growing more accepted and has begun to make an impact on culture. Single parent families are more commonly single mother families than single father. These families sometimes face difficult issues besides the fact that they have to rear their children on their own, for example, low income making it difficult to pay for rent, child care, and other necessities for a healthy and safe home. Members of the nuclear families of members of one's own (former) nuclear family may class as lineal or as collateral. Kin who regard them as lineal refer to them in terms that build on the terms used within the nuclear family: * Great-Grandparent ** Great-Grandfather: a grandparent's father ** Great-Grandmother: a grandparent's mother * Grandparent ** Grandfather: a parent's father ** Grandmother: a parent's mother * Grandchild ** Grandson: a child's son ** Granddaughter: a child's daughter For collateral relatives, more classificatory terms come into play, terms that do not build on the terms used within the nuclear family: * Uncle: parent's brother, or male spouse of parent's sibling * Aunt: parent's sister, or female spouse of parent's sibling * Nephew: sibling's son, or spouse's sibling's son * Niece: sibling's daughter, or spouse's sibling's daughter When additional generations intervene (in other words, when one's collateral relatives belong to the same generation as one's grandparents or grandchildren), the prefixes "great-" or "grand-" modifies these terms. Also, as with grandparents and grandchildren, as more generations intervene the prefix becomes "great-grand-," adding another "great-" for each additional generation. Most collateral relatives have never had membership of the nuclear family of the members of one's own nuclear family. * Cousin: the most classificatory term; the children of uncles or aunts. One can further distinguish cousins by degrees of collaterality and by generation. Two persons of the same generation who share a grandparent count as "first cousins" (one degree of collaterality); if they share a great-grandparent they count as "second cousins" (two degrees of collaterality) and so on. If two persons share an ancestor, one as a grandchild and the other as a great-grandchild of that individual, then the two descendants class as "first cousins once removed" (removed by one generation); if they shared ancestor figures as the grandparent of one individual and the great-great-grandparent of the other, the individuals class as "first cousins twice removed" (removed by two generations), and so on. Similarly, if they shared ancestor figures as the great-grandparent of one person and the great-great-grandparent of the other, the individuals class as "second cousins once removed". Hence one can refer to a "third cousin once removed upwards." Cousins of an older generation (in other words, one's parents' first cousins), although technically first cousins once removed, are often classified with "aunts" and "uncles." Similarly, a person may refer to close friends of one's parents as "aunt" or "uncle," or may refer to close friends as "brother" or "sister," using the practice of fictive kinship. English-speakers mark relationships by marriage (except for wife/husband) with the tag "-in-law." The mother and father of one's spouse become one's mother-in-law and father-in-law; the female spouse of one's child becomes one's daughter-in-law and the male spouse of one's child becomes one's son-in-law. The term "sister-in-law" refers to three essentially different relationships, either the wife of one's sibling, or the sister of one's spouse, or, in some uses, the wife of one's spouse's sibling. "Brother-in-law" expresses a similar ambiguity. The terms "half-brother" and "half-sister" indicate siblings who share only one biological or adoptive parent. Average Family in Americas Average Family with childhood age starting 1 (United States) Baby Toddler Child Adolescence Average Family with childhood age starting 2 (United States) Baby Toddler Child Adolescence Average Family with childhood age starting 1 (Europe and Asia) Baby Toddler Child Adolescence Average Family with childhood age starting 2 (Europe and Asia) Baby Toddler Child Adolescence